The retired Andrew Crowther's daughter Elsie has been in an accident in Paris, and now the old man, his son-in-law and granddaughter are on their way to France on (Freeman Wills Crofts') The 12.30 From Croydon (1934). When they arrive in France though, they discover that Crowther has not survived the jump over the pond. Flashback some weeks earlier, where we learn about Crowther's nephew Charles Swinburn and the imminent danger his factory is facing because of the Great Depresson. Pleading with his wealthy uncle doesn't help, as Crother thinks Charles isn't doing his best and he should try harder. But trying harder won't help a business that will go belly-up in maybe two weeks, so Charles decides that to save the factory, his employees and the chance to marry his love, Crowther must die, so he can inherit. Charles concocts an intricate plan to poison his uncle, which succeeds, but after the crime other problems pop up he hadn't foreseen, one of which the famous Inspector French.

Two years ago, I read Freeman Wills Crofts' Mystery on Southampton Waterand I loved the thrilling inverted adventure. In fact, I loved it so much I bought The 12.30 From Croydon soon after finishing that book (a Japanese translation because I was in Japan at the time). And it took me over two years to read it. Well, it took me three days once I actually got started, but I have read the prologue at least five times the last two years... I should probably just read Crofts in English, instead of an old Japanese translation...

Anyway, so the only other Crofts I've read is Mystery on Southampton Water, which is very similar to The 12.30 From Croydon: they were published in the same year (1934), both are inverted mystery stories starring Inspector French, both are about a man trying to save a business in trouble, both plans initially work, but other unforeseen problems pop up that force the protagonist to take emergency measures.. So I am very tempted to compare the two novels, and in my opinion, The 12.30 From Croydon is the less entertaining one. Not that it is bad, but it I find it less alluring. One of the reasons I liked Mystery on Southampton Water was the tension of the story and the presentation: it starts out as an inverted mystery with spy-thriller theme, jumps to a police procedural part starring Inspector French and turn jumps back to a second inverted mystery plot, and even though the writing style (in the Japanese translation) was very bland and dry, I was still captivated from start till finish.

The 12.30 From Croydon however sticks with Charles for practically all of the story: French appears a few times, but he is only allowed to talk about his investigation in the final two chapters of the novel. Until that part, we just follow Charles in his adventures and even though there are some thrilling events after the murder on Crowther, especially past the 70% mark when everything starts to fall apart, the story misses a kind of tension because the reader doesn't know why everything is going wrong. Suddenly the police is very suspicious of Charles, and neither he nor the reader knows why. It just happens and the reader and Charles just have to sit still and accept it all. Of course, Inspector French does explain how he first came to suspect Charles in the end, but I didn't like the way the story suddenly switched to a very passive role for Charles.

In Mystery on Southampton Water, we saw a lot more of Inspector French's investigations, so we knew why he started to haunt the suspects. It's the same with Columbo: after the murder, the murderer and Columbo usually share screentime and we see how both sides react to each other. Tension is created, because the reader is aware of what is going on at both sides (to an extent), like seeing a chess game. In comparison, The 12.30 From Croydon is like watching a chess game where you only see the white pieces and you're only told what happened and where the opponent's pieces were after you lost the king. Emphasis lies on the criminal's psychology and the thoughts he has as he reacts to each new development, which can be fun, I guess, but I personally prefer the excitement of seeing how both sides react to each other, rather than just one side of a game with an inverted mystery.

The 12.30 From Croydon is an okay inverted mystery, but so many of its elements are featured in the more amusing Mystery on Southampton Water, I am tempted to say you're better of reading that novel than Croydon. If you're more into criminal psychology and so, Croydon might have more to offer than Southampton though.

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I think it may be easy to get Freeman and Crofts confused because they both approach the mystery story in the same tone of voice. Their narratives are both highly factual and strongly plotted. Both of them wrote with a very plain, deliberate and logical style. I would be very surprised if Crofts had not absorbed much of his style from the earlier Freeman. Both of them began in professions which demanded a high degree of factual application: Freeman was a physician and Crofts was a railroad engineer. Both authors were very important in the development of the mystery story. Freeman presented the first fully realized forensic medicine specialist and also the first fully realized inverted mysteries (in The Singing Bone, 1912). Although there seems to be some controversy on the subject, I think it is plain that Crofts was the inventor of the police procedural form. His book The Cask (1920) is a story which contains nothing put the procedure followed by the police to solve a fairly realistic crime. All you have to do is compare it to the Sherlock Holmes stories or Bentley' Trent's Last Case to see how different it was. If the procedure followed was somewhat primitive, well in 1920 police procedure was in fact rather primitive.

I remember that while Raymond Chandler had a general dislike for the school of Agatha Christie, he wrote very favorably about both Freeman and Crofts, which makes sense because both of them were alike. He also followed their example: any time Marlowe is talking about a technical subject like firearms or the law, he generally has his facts correct.

Crofts must have had some influence in Japan, because I note that in the earlier Tozai 100 best translated mystery list, The Cask placed 7th and The 12.30 from Croydon placed 97th, and in the later list The Cask still placed as high as 33rd. Seicho Matsumoto's Inspector Imanishi Investigates reads a lot like a Crofts book to me.

Crofts is not a very big name in Japan, but he did have the luck of having many of his books reprinted the last few years (My copy of Southampton for example was part of an annual reprint campaign of the publisher Tokyo Sogen). On the other hand, he suffers from rather dated translations, and his books are not definitely not light to read in Japanese.

I'd say that Matsumoto's Points and Lines feels closer to Crofts than Inspector Imanishi Investigates though. I haven't read The Cask yet, but I do know that it inspired AYUKAWA Tetsuya's The Black Trunk, which I enjoyed a lot.